“Our case is desperate! All the Burtons are coming out dead against us; and neither ‘the new philanthropy,’ nor ‘Friends,’ nor ‘anti-gallows,’ can save us. I never knew excitement get up so fast. It’s the infernal aristocracy that kills us!—Williams makes great use of it; and our people will not stand aristocracy. See what a magnanimous report to the legislature the learned Attorney-General has just made on the subject of aristocracy. How admirably he touches up the kings and countesses!” “Pshaw!” exclaimed Dunscomb, with a contemptuous curl of the lip—“not one in a thousand knows the meaning of the word; and he among the rest. The report you mention is that of a refined gentleman, to be sure, and is addressed to his equals. What exclusive political privilege does Mary Monson possess? or what does the patroon, unless it be the privilege of having more stolen from him, by political frauds, than any other man in the State? This cant about social aristocracy, even in a state of society in which the servant deserts his master with impunity, in the midst of a dinner, is very miserable stuff! Aristocracy, forsooth! If there be aristocracy in America, the blackguard is the aristocrat. Away, then, with all this trash, and speak common sense in future.” “You amaze me, sir! Why, I regard _you_ as a sort of aristocrat, Mr. Dunscomb.” “Me!—And what do you see aristocratic about me, pray?” “Why, sir, you don’t _look_ like the rest of us. Your very _walk_ is different—your language, manners, dress, habits and opinions, all differ from those of the Duke’s county bar. Now, to my notion, that is being exclusive and peculiar; and whatever is peculiar is aristocratic, is it not?” Here Dunscomb and his nephew burst out in a laugh; and, for a few minutes, Mary Monson was forgotten. Timms was quite in earnest; for he had fallen into the every-day notions, in this respect, and it was not easy to get him out of them. “Perhaps the Duke’s county bar contains the aristocrats, and I am the cerf!” said the counsellor. “That cannot be—you _must_ be the aristocrat, if any there be among us. I don’t know _why_ it is so, but so it is; yes, _you_ are the aristocrat, if there be one at our bar.”